


Best-Laid Plans

by arabmorgan



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28311885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabmorgan/pseuds/arabmorgan
Summary: It really wasn’t Yeosang’s fault though. In the end, everything boiled down to Hongjoong and the ridiculousmanitogame he had come up with for Christmas.Yes, it was definitely all Hongjoong’s fault.
Relationships: Jung Wooyoung/Kang Yeosang
Comments: 6
Kudos: 76





	Best-Laid Plans

Some days – not often, but occasionally – Yeosang had moments where he went, _What am I even doing here?_ It happened at the end of performances, as he listened to the fans screaming their lungs out for a group he was part of, and it happened in the recording studio, as he listened to his own voice set beside Jongho’s and played back to him a dozen times over.

In those moments, where he smiled even when he didn’t feel like smiling, and threw his shoulders back as if his confidence was as high as the clouds, he felt like a fraud of the highest degree.

And right then, as he stared at the flaming stove in their dorm kitchen with a pan clutched uselessly in his hand and Seonghwa yelling indistinctly somewhere behind him – well, that was definitely another classic _What am I even doing here?_ moment.

It really wasn’t Yeosang’s fault though. In the end, everything boiled down to Hongjoong and the ridiculous _manito_ game he had come up with for Christmas.

Yes, it was definitely all Hongjoong’s fault.

* * *

When Yeosang had drawn Wooyoung’s name out of the little plastic box that Hongjoong was shaking enthusiastically with the widest grin possible on his face, he had felt relief. Relief because he already knew what Wooyoung liked and disliked, and exactly what he would need to do to make Wooyoung’s life easier like the good guardian angel he was supposed to be for the next two weeks.

Wooyoung as a person was a bit of a contradiction. He was whiny and demanding at the best of times, but he was also very easily appeased, and it amused Yeosang to no end to make Wooyoung swing back and forth between both extremes. All of which, of course, made him a veritable expert at Wooyoung-manipulation, and thus a perfect _manito_.

Less than a minute later, Wooyoung sidled up to him, his grin widening as he nudged Yeosang in the shoulder. “Who did you get?” he whispered, holding his own crumpled little piece of paper tightly in his fist as if it contained the world’s finest chicken seasoning recipe.

Yeosang raised a brow. “You do realise that it’s supposed to be a secret, right? I’m going to tell Hongjoong hyung that you asked,” he said airily, hiding a smile at the scandalised glare that Wooyoung shot him.

“You’re mean,” Wooyoung muttered, but he clearly knew a lost cause when he saw one. With a huff, he promptly scampered off to San’s side, although not before Yeosang felt a reproving slap on his butt.

He just hoped that San wouldn’t tell Wooyoung whose name he had drawn. If Wooyoung managed to finagle enough information out of the other members – which Yeosang could actually see happening, because Wooyoung could be quite deceptively persuasive when he put his mind to it – it wouldn’t be too difficult to figure out whose name _Yeosang_ had drawn, and he certainly couldn’t have that happening.

After all, Yeosang’s _manito_ agenda was a three-step plan that he had to be reasonably careful about, since most of them involved subtle changes to his behaviour, and Wooyoung was too perfectly attuned to him not to notice if he slipped up. It went something like this:

  1. Cut back on the Wooyoung-related sarcastic remarks;
  2. Slip in a bit more casual skinship than usual;
  3. Maybe even let Wooyoung get a kiss in outside their bedroom. Just once.



If these didn’t make Wooyoung’s next two weeks the absolute best of his life, Yeosang would voluntarily give up the ‘best boyfriend ever’ title that Wooyoung had bestowed upon him on their first-year anniversary. He’d even gotten a little plaque engraved and everything, which Yeosang actually quite adored.

As it turned out, the three-step plan wasn’t what tripped Yeosang up anyway.

Yeosang would be the first to snap at anyone who dared to suggest that Wooyoung was less than intelligent just because his emotions rippled close to the surface, but it was also true that the moment Wooyoung put his trust in someone, he was quite liable to believe anything they said whole-heartedly.

All this meant was that Wooyoung accepted every moment of skinship that Yeosang gingerly attempted with obvious delight and a complete lack of suspicion. Sometimes, at the exact moment a cutting remark surfaced in Yeosang’s mind that he had to forcibly hold back, Wooyoung might look over at him expectantly, pause for a moment at the forthcoming silence, and then resume whatever conversation he was having at the time.

It wasn’t _too_ difficult, even if Yeosang was forced to endure an uncountable number of affectionate headlocks or rib-crushing hugs when he slipped an arm around Wooyoung’s waist or interlocked their fingers one too many times.

“You’re so cuddly nowadays,” Wooyoung whispered happily to him one night after hoisting himself up onto Yeosang’s bunk. “Is it the holiday spirit infecting you?” He giggled, flopping bodily onto Yeosang and cheerfully ignoring Yeosang’s vehemently hissed protests.

“I’m not _cuddly_ ,” Yeosang said hoarsely, which was really all he could manage with Wooyoung laying limply on him and half-flattening him to death. Wooyoung’s head was tucked neatly beneath Yeosang’s chin, and his hair was soft against Yeosang’s palm when he ran his hand lightly across Wooyoung’s head.

“Are you tired?” Wooyoung murmured, the sharp line of his jaw digging into Yeosang’s sternum as he spoke.

Yeosang closed his eyes, feeling the familiar ache of his body from their earlier dance practice but finding nothing else out of the ordinary. “Only a little,” he murmured.

Wooyoung raised his head, and the smile he directed at Yeosang then was small and fond, the kind that Yeosang wished he could tuck into his pocket for difficult days. He wished that more people could see this side of Wooyoung – the part of him that was kind and thoughtful and so, so full of love that it made Yeosang’s chest ache – but he was also quite glad to keep it all for himself.

“I should let you rest then,” Wooyoung said, but Yeosang slung an arm across Wooyoung’s back before he could push himself up fully.

Wooyoung hesitated for only a moment, his gaze flitting across Yeosang’s face before his smile widened into a full-fledged grin. His lips were warm and familiar against Yeosang’s mouth, just like home, and he couldn’t quite tell if his breathlessness was caused by Wooyoung’s increasingly insistent tongue or the way he was still collapsed against Yeosang’s chest.

“I’m turning the lights out!” Jongho called grouchily from somewhere below them, not bothering to conceal his annoyance in the stomping of his feet across the room.

Yeosang couldn’t help smiling as Wooyoung chuckled against his lips, his breaths escaping in short puffs. He might have considered pulling away to apologise to their truly pitiful roommate, but Wooyoung’s teeth pressed lightly down on his lower lip right then, and he quite forgot all of his better intentions after that.

* * *

So none of that was the issue.

Even the kiss that Yeosang grudgingly allowed in front of the rest of the team was less embarrassing than he had constantly feared. There was a bit of giggling from Mingi and San, but Wooyoung simply glowed so brilliantly after that perfectly straightforward peck that it made even the gentle ribbing from Yunho worth it.

No, the problem was that Yeosang apparently had the memory of a bumblebee and had conveniently chosen to forget that the _manito_ game obviously culminated in an exchange of gifts on Christmas Day. It was only on the eve, as he watched Jongho pull a nicely-wrapped box out of a drawer, that he came to the horrible realisation that he _hadn’t prepared a gift for Wooyoung_.

His last-minute, frantically put-together plan of action was thus to make a nice Christmas breakfast for his annoyingly endearing boyfriend, because who didn’t like a romantic breakfast in bed? It made perfect sense in Yeosang’s mind.

The thing was, as much as Wooyoung loved cooking, he didn’t actually cook as much as the fans probably imagined he did. It was a deliberate choice on their part to survive on take-out most of the time, rather than be forced to do the cleaning up after an exhausting session of frying or grilling that left the entire kitchen greasy.

And because Wooyoung understood exactly how difficult food preparation was, he would obviously appreciate the effort that Yeosang had gone to for his gift – right?

That was why Yeosang woke up bright and early on Christmas morning, his phone alarm beeping frantically from where it had been stuffed under his pillow so that it wouldn’t wake either of his roommates. He wasn’t quite sure yet exactly what he was going to make, but the vague image in his mind suggested that it would probably involve eggs. He had a fair bit of prior experience with eggs after all, even if they hadn’t turned out perfectly.

Today, Yeosang had decided, was not a day for experimentation. His goal wasn’t to become a professional sous-chef; it was to make something reasonably edible for Wooyoung that also wouldn’t make him sick for the rest of the day. In this case, less was probably more.

He was in the midst of cracking his first egg when the whispering drag of socks against tile sounded behind him, and Seonghwa muttered, still sounding half-asleep, “Yeosang? What are you doing?” He sounded utterly baffled, as if he wasn’t completely sure if he’d actually woken up or was still dreaming.

“Making breakfast,” Yeosang said primly, one corner of his mouth curling in triumph when he managed to crack his egg into the pan with only one hand. “It’s my gift for the _manito_ game.”

“Oh,” Seonghwa said hesitantly. Out of the corner of his eye, Yeosang could see their oldest member moving forward curiously, leaning one elbow against the counter as he settled in to watch, as if Yeosang frying an egg was some sort of spectacle on TV.

Yeosang noted with some unease that his egg white was starting to bubble. Did that mean it was the right time to flip the egg? Taking a step back, he lifted the frying pan off the stove and began to shake it back and forth as he considered the physics of flipping an egg.

Seonghwa raised a hand. “Be careful –” he started anxiously, but it was too late.

With a quick jerk of his hand, Yeosang sent the egg flying into the air. It seemed to hang suspended in mid-air for a tense second before it fell, catching on the very edge of the pan and then landing on the electric stove with a small, ominous _splat_.

Yeosang blinked motionlessly, and even Seonghwa was utterly silent. It felt like a particularly unwelcome bout of déjà vu.

A moment later, the egg began to crinkle a lovely, crisp brown at the edges before promptly bursting into flames.

And that was exactly how Yeosang found himself staring at a flaming stove with an empty pan in his hand, while Seonghwa rushed over in hand-wringing panic to save the day with a hastily soaked kitchen towel.

When Wooyoung heard about what had happened, he all but laughed himself sick, and Yeosang thought quite spitefully that if he was going to gloat over his own boyfriend’s suffering like that, he didn’t deserve any homemade breakfast anyway.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get you anything,” he said sulkily later that morning, tucked against one corner of the couch with his knees drawn up to his chin as he watched the merry gift exchange happening before his eyes. Hongjoong, the culprit behind all of Yeosang’s recent woes, had presented him with a brand new sketchpad and a set of coloured markers, and he traced his fingers over the plastic covering of the markers absently. Wooyoung had gotten Yunho a gift card to buy games with, and his face was still alight with excitement as he rounded the coffee table to collapse by Yeosang’s side.

“I don’t _care_ , I promise,” he insisted, grabbing Yeosang’s face with both hands and squeezing at his cheeks gently. “You’ve been the best _manito_ ever. Even if it didn’t work out, I know you tried your best with that egg.”

Yeosang’s expression instantly soured, and Wooyoung laughed, throwing his arms around Yeosang’s neck and pressing a contrite kiss to his cheek.

“There _is_ something that I want from you though,” he said in a low voice, mischief emanating from every pore as he sat back with a wide grin on his face. “If you want to make it up to me, you have to say yes to this. It’s really not anything stupid.”

Yeosang narrowed his eyes distrustfully as he met Wooyoung’s eager gaze, but he slowly inclined his head, stretching his legs out so that they were slung across Wooyoung’s lap. “Okay,” he said, because in the end he had never been all that great at denying Wooyoung anything. “What do you want?”

Wooyoung beamed and reached out to catch one of Yeosang’s hands in his, rubbing his thumb across the bumps of Yeosang’s knuckles.

“Be mine forever,” he said, quite simply, and that – well, that _was_ something that Yeosang thought he could do for Wooyoung after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas and happy holidays! *ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* ੈ✩‧₊˚


End file.
